Had a chance to visit Big Willow with Open Track Racing on Wednesday. I was hanging out with OKUSA as he had his first real track day with his new E90 build. He was flying out there! That car is real quick.
On my end, I haven't driven much in the last couple years, and it's been 4 years since my last visit to WSIR, so I just used the day to get back up to speed. Gonna be honest----I was pretty hesitant out there at the beginning. But as is my usual way, I build speed throughout the day. We had ideal conditions, so it was a bummer that I was out of practice. Also, we were supposed to have 5 sessions, but someone spilled a lot of oil along a long stretch of the track, so it was shut down for awhile.....so we only had 4 sessions. I got my groove back by session 4, so I was sad that we didn't get the 5th one in. I had new A7's with me, but I elected not to use them. (Yeah.....that took some discipline.....) I'll save them for Buttonwillow in December. I was on pretty old DH that I've been running all summer at High Plains.
My previous best on the old WSIR pavement in 2020 was 1:25.5.
First session, I did a 1:30. Blah. Was tip-toeing around the dang track. 2nd session, did 1:27. 3rd session, did 1:25. 4th session, did a 2x1:24.1, and I was on a 1:23.4 lap through Turn 6 when I caught a Nascar/tube frame chassis race car.......and that lap was ruined. I was on another 1:23.5 lap going into T9 and I braked like 100,000 feet too early for Turn 9 and totally ruined the lap. Man, don't know what the heck I was doing on that one. You look at the data and see where I hit the brakes, and it's like.....ummm wtf were you doing?.......Anyway, it's just all pointing to the fact that I still need to work on getting WSIR back into my head.
So, I got a new PB on quite old Pirelli DH. It's not the most impressive time compared to what people were doing in Bimmer Challenge on the new pavement a few months ago. (Also, OKUSA went quicker.) But I think the car has quite a bit more to offer. I just took too long to get back up to speed. And it would've been nice if we had had all of our sessions.
Now I'm looking forward to a couple Buttonwillow dates in December. I'm feeling like my driving chops are coming back finally (although I'm still braking too early). I'm hoping I can get back up to speed more quickly at Buttonwillow.
Tech note: A couple weeks ago, I was looking on the inside of the barrels of the rims, and I was noticing brake dust collecting around what looked to be fluid droplets. It then occurred to me that I have not replaced my AP Essex Radical piston seals since I've bought the calipers in 2018. Brake fluid was starting to seep out. So, I ordered new seals, and this week, with the help of Minicorsa, I replaced the seals. I did all the disassembly and removal of the calipers, and I swapped the seals themselves and cleaned the pistons and reinstalled them, but Danny quickly got all the pistons out of the calipers for me, and took care of the bleeding/flushing of the brakes. Thanks to Minicorsa for speeding up that job. It's quite a bit of work, and it's fairly messy.....Anyway, all this to say, don't leave your caliper piston seals in for too long. 6 years was too long. And I honestly feel like the brakes are now working quite a bit better than they were.
Here's my WSIR fast lap video. Was chasing a Radical the whole time: